Numb and Getting Colder
by doranobaka
Summary: [The Adventure Zone, Klarg-centric] He wants so badly to regret saving the damn fool wizard, but he can't quite manage it.


**A/N:** I love Klarg so much and I was so horrified when we found out about the rest of the hugbear family. So obviously my solution to this distress is to write a fic about how horrible it must be to be Klarg.

 _Warnings for implied mind control, mild suicidal ideation, consent issues, and dissociation._

* * *

Three days of relentless walking through the desert puts enough distance between Klarg and the city of Goldcliff that he can no longer make out any signs of it behind him, but it does nothing to quiet the buzzing in his skull. At the remove of time, he can see a little more clearly, can delineate the edges between what he considers himself and what he considers Lucas's programming, but finding the exact demarcation of the charm spell is a little harder.

Oh, some of it is easy: the enchantment, magnified by the fried circuitry in his brain, compelled him to snatch Taako out of the air and deposit him in the side-car. The enchantment was responsible for the thrill of contentment when Taako had pronounced them "main dudes." The enchantment was the primary motivator behind jumping onto the shark tank (though it wasn't the sole reason he felt vicious elation when the laser sliced the top off). That particular memory elicits a snort of satisfaction, even if his own desires had been muddled up in it.

Wind-whipped sand stings at his eyes, but Klarg presses on. The mounting horror at how matted his fur must be becoming, that is Lucas's fault. He'll indulge it later, though. The pleasure at stroking his soft coat, it turns out, is wholly his own. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his paw until the grit is gone. He'll have a bath when he finds civilization again, but he will resist the blasted urge to brew oolong tea.

Three days turn into four, then five, then a week. The desert turns to scrublands by degrees, and it's easier to find water and prey. The buzzing never ceases, but it recedes enough for him to piece together a little more of himself. He'd definitely been the one to steal the motorcycle, and neither Taako nor Lucas had motivated him to roar onto the battlewagon race track. He'd wanted revenge on the Hammerheads for kidnapping him (and, the buzzing reminds him, it was Taako's guidance that had let him claim it).

He snarls, angry and impotent because he can't argue that fact. And the little stab of fondness when Taako crosses his mind only twists the knife. He shakes with the shame of it, how his traitorous brain perks up at the mere thought of the elf's regard. Every fiber of his being (of the parts he knows are _him_ ) rails against it, tries to fight the blind affection. And yet.

He wants so badly to regret saving the damn fool wizard, but he can't quite manage it.

* * *

Less than a fortnight after fleeing Goldcliff, Klarg stumbles upon a tiny goblin encampment where the scrub turns to woods. The leader is young and weak and tearing his head off is trivial. The rest of the goblin brigands are young and weak, too, but that suits Klarg fine. No one will even consider knifing him for several days, and by then he will be groomed and gone and the weaklings can squabble amongst themselves for power.

His first night as their new leader, he orders them to hunt for him while he lounges by their cook fire with the blood of their former chieftain coagulating on his claws. His brain fills with low, vaguely displeased static when he fails to wash it off, but the goblin scouts feed him well and it is the best sleep he's gotten in quite some time.

The second day, he bathes, after a fashion. The goblins' camp is an easy stroll from a cool stream, and Klarg spends most of the morning sluicing off the goblin gore and the grime from his journey. An enterprising goblin volunteers to help him groom his coat in an obvious, clumsy attempt to curry favor. They have no soap to speak of, but his fur is free of particulates, mud, and dried blood by the time he returns to the erstwhile chieftain's hut to rest again.

The second night, he dreams.

* * *

Before Lucas Miller had plunged his tiny human fingers into Klarg's brain, his dreams had been fairly standard for a bugbear of his age and skill. More often than not, his brain replayed images and sensations of past battles, sometimes stitching them together into new tableaus of satisfying bloodshed. After Lucas Miller's tampering, his dreams became drab, gray things filled with dithering over domestic drivel. Even after the circuitry fried, his sleeping mind could only haphazardly scramble the two states such that Klarg found himself tearing up furniture that bled and then cleaning the mess with daintily folded goblin skins.

The banality of it all made him seethe when he awoke.

With the addition of the enchantment, though, Klarg's dreams only become further muddled. Sometimes he finds himself preparing tea for his guests, hugging them willingly before they leave his humble abode. Sometimes he finds himself tearing his enemies limb from limb under the watchful, expectanct gaze of a distant wizard master.

Sometimes, like this night, his dreams find him standing alone in a vast gray expanse, facing none other than Taako himself. The elf is clad in a ridiculous flowing robe, with an umbrella hooked over one arm and an oversized pointy hat perched precariously atop his head.

All of the parts of Klarg that are still _Klarg_ scream and strain against the bonds of this dream. How vile has his life become that even _here_ , in the confines of his own sleep, he isn't safe from this? (The buzzing swells around him; of course he isn't safe. He can hardly expect to outrun his own mind, can he?)

Without realizing it, he's raised his dream-self's hands and shoved aside the high collar of Taako's robes to expose the delicate line of the elf's neck. His claws don't dig into Taako's flesh, but his fingers tighten almost of their own volition. Taako stares at him impassively, and it only makes things _worse._ A low rumble starts in Klarg's chest, spills out through his clenched teeth, and he bears down on Taako's throat with intent.

As his fingers tighten, he pushes forward and the elf stumbles backward obligingly until the gray around them gives way to a sterile metal bench like one of the many in Lucas's lab. Taako tips backward, off-balance, serene gaze never wavering, and Klarg follows him down.

They stay that way for a moment, two, with Klarg straddling Taako's chest and his claws surely leaving imprints in Taako's skin. Klarg's mind goes as blank as Taako's stare, all thought fuzzed out by the mounting sound of buzzing. For a brief, wonderful, terrifying moment, he thinks, _I could kill him and then I would be done,_ and the idea is fueled not by anger but by a strange resignation.

The resulting burst of static hits him like a physical blow to the head, knocking him backward and sending his entire world askew. His vision wavers. The image of Taako sprawled on the metal bench swims and shifts and reasserts itself with Taako kneeling in front of him. "You're my main dude, right?" Taako whispers, words somehow cutting through the noise in Klarg's skull and Klarg wants and wants and _wants_ so badly to deny it.

But what Klarg _wants_ and what the reality of the situation _is_ are two vastly different creatures hurtling away from each other at dizzying speed. He wishes he could hate this wizard. He wishes he could do something— _anything_ —to make Taako feel and understand this horrible shame. He wishes for so much but all he can do is hate himself for being too weak to do anything about it.

"Of course we're main dudes," he responds. He hears the words as if at a great distance, and their tone is shocked. As if he hadn't just been trying to strangle the wizard. As if they were friends. As if the idea of them being anything other than _main dudes_ were the most preposterous thing.

"That was some pretty un-dudely activity there, my man," Taako drawls. His expression has shifted, grown sharp and sly. His eyes have narrowed and a mischievous glint inhabits them.

Klarg's head bows under the crushing weight of his shame. Some of him remains distant, remains aware enough of himself to be confused as his mouth starts forming words, "I don't know what came over me. I'm so very sorry, Taako. Please accept my apologies. I'll do whatever I must to reassure you of my sincerity."

Taako's lips purse as if he were in deep thought, and his fingers twist a lock of his own hair in an absent sort of way. "Hmm… That's a good question, my dude." He casts his eyes about as if his surroundings weren't some drab, featureless expanse. A heavy stone of dread settles in the pit of Klarg's stomach, but it's something he feels at a remove. He says nothing. Finally, Taako snaps his fingers. "How about you brew up some of that tea of yours, and then you can let me take a look at that matted mess you're calling a coat these days."

The dream shifts obligingly in response to his words. Between one heartbeat and the next, they're standing in a space that's half one of the Millers' sitting rooms and half the crude kitchenette Klarg had been keeping when he and Taako met. His body is already on auto-pilot, impelled by Lucas's programming, gathering everything he needs for a proper tea service before he can think to do otherwise. (That part of him that seems like it's hovering about three feet behind himself _tries_ to do otherwise. It tries to loosen his fingers, to let the teacups fall to the floor, to root his feet in place, to do any number of things to ruin this vile routine. His body doesn't listen.)

The water is the perfect temperature. The tea is impeccably steeped. His claws don't even shake when he presents the delicate demitasse to his guest. His own cup rests before him, and it will remain untouched until Taako has taken the first sip. It's a scenario Klarg has seen himself play out more times than he cares to remember, but he can't quite pull himself away.

"Why so glum, chum?" Taako asks, leaning across the table to take the offered teacup. What looked so tiny in Klarg's monstrous grip is merely average when cradled by Taako's slender fingers. It's a few moments before Klarg registers that his guest has gone off-script. His throat works for a moment as he tries to right himself and find a response that will bring everything back on track.

( _Put me out of my misery_ , he wants to say. _I tried to kill you and I couldn't. Shouldn't that be enough to make you want to kill me?_ )

"It doesn't seem right," his body says. "That you would only want tea after my outburst earlier." It's not what he wanted, but it isn't in the script, either. A small victory, perhaps.

Taako waves one hand in dismissal while making a _pshaw_ noise. "You're thinking I should, what, burn a spell on punishing you or something? That'd be pretty un-dudely behavior on my part, wouldn't it. I'm a pretty forgiving kind of guy. Melting your face wouldn't make either of us feel better, and have you ever smelled burning bugbear fur?"

He has, as a matter of fact, and he thinks that smell might be preferable to the aroma of the tea still blithely steaming in the cup in front of him. Instead, he ducks his head. "You're too kind."

"Nah," says Taako. He sets aside his demitasse and then he's beside Klarg. One of his hands finds Klarg's chin and nudges it until Klarg faces him. He's scowling, and Klarg can't find it in himself to meet his eyes.

"You did a real number on that huggably soft coat of yours, bucko," Taako tells him. His other hand tries to card through the thick fur of his ruff, but his fingers catch in a snarl that will probably be a mat in the morning. (Maybe he should feel disgusted. Maybe he should try to pull away. Maybe the touch should feel comforting. Mostly, he feels numb.) "Lemme get a comb and help you out."

"You're too kind," Klarg reiterates. In front of him on the table, his tea has disappeared and a wide-toothed metal comb has taken its place. Taako snatches it up and turns it over in his hand. It glints and still Klarg feels very little.

"Bend over a little, my dude," Taako orders and Klarg complies without complaint. Perhaps Taako didn't mean for it to be that way. Perhaps he'd meant it only as a suggestion. Perhaps he truly was unaware of what his enchantment had done.

It's an easy enough scenario to believe as he runs the comb through Klarg's thick fur. The teeth scrape against Klarg's skin sometimes, never hard enough to hurt. Sometimes the tangles are stubborn and Taako rests the comb on one of Klarg's upturned palms while he tackles it by hand.

The tug of his fingers as he works through the knots is gentle and insistent. For a moment, Klarg can close his eyes and imagine: he's sitting with his family, his sister is helping him groom. It's not a better mental image, not really, not when the only reason she would ever have for doing that is Lucas's implants.

He feels like he should feel sick, but he all he can feel is Taako's fingers and the weight of the metal comb in his hand.

At great length, Taako lets his hands still. He slides his fingers slowly through Klarg's neck ruff until he links his fingers around the back of Klarg's neck. His face is so close to Klarg's that it's difficult to focus on it.

"Hey, big guy," Taako says, his voice just barely above a husky whisper. "We good? We still main dudes?"

Klarg swallows. Taako takes a step forward. Their bodies are close, now, too. Klarg's words are a little strangled. "Of. Of course we are."

Taako tilts his head, pushes himself onto his tiptoes, presses his lips to Klarg's muzzle.

Klarg's fist closes around the comb in response. The teeth dig into him hard enough to hurt.

He wakes up.

* * *

Klarg leaves the goblin encampment before the break of dawn.

The gulf between what he wants and what happens is wide, but he's pretty sure that the further he gets from wizards and scientists, the better his chances are that it won't get any wider.


End file.
